And so farewell then, MSP Det. Lt. R. Bradford Porter (ret.), who ran the crack unit that did the background check on LaMar Cook, a career criminal DEI Democrat hire who was allegedly running kilos of cocaine out of the governor’s personal office in Springfield.
Kinda embarrassing, and someone had to take the fall. There’s an old saying when scandals like LaMar Cook break:
“Heads will roll.”
Actually the reality is, “Deputies’ heads will roll.”
And now Porter’s head has rolled. But shed no tears for him. In retirement, Porter will be, like Liberace, laughing all the way to the bank.
Annual state pension: $137,512 a year. That works out to a monthly kiss in the mail of $11,459.
According to the state comptroller’s website, Porter retired Jan. 26. Like all state cops, he needed a wheelbarrow to get all his cash out the door — $56,138.59 in “leave buy back” on the way out the door.
Last year, when LaMar Cook was busted, Porter pocketed $203,980. His job was running the State Police’s State Bureau of Investigations (SBI), which handles background checks into state management hires.
Obviously, judging from LaMar Cook, the SBI is every bit as efficient as every other part of the Mass State Police.
Last November, when I first wrote about Porter, the State Police did not respond to repeated inquiries about his rather checkered, shall we say, career, even before the LaMar Cook catastrophe.
This week, I again sought comment from the MSP about Porter’s quiet departure from the scene. Whenever these extinguished LEO’s check out, I inquire if there was any sort of farewell party, maybe formal induction into the MSP Hall of Infamy or at least into that highest of fraternal MSP brotherhoods, the Order of the Broken Tail Light.
Again, when the phone didn’t ring, I knew it was the MSP.
Safe to say that after all those decades slurping nosily at the public trough, Det. Lt. Porter went out not with a bang, but a whimper.
The most shocking thing about Porter is not that his bureau was totally incompetent – that’s not a bug of the MSP, after all. It’s a feature. It’s that he was on the job at all after an incident in Milton in 2007.
While not in uniform one afternoon, Porter went crazy on a 44-year-old woman named Beth E. Shea. She was a securities trader in Boston, and Porter said she’d been speeding in his residential neighborhood.
I wrote about all this last November, less than two months before he retired:
After chasing her, he shattered the front window of her car with a flashlight, then pulled her out as she begged for her life in terror. Porter claimed that while breaking into Shea’s car, he never ran her license plate because he “forgot.”
In a later decision in federal court, Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV wrote: “He dragged her out, shouting obscenities at her and calling her a (bleeping) bitch… Multiple witnesses to the event called 911, thinking that Shea was a victim of domestic violence.”
When Milton police arrived on the scene, Beth Shea was on the ground, screaming, “Help me! He’s going to kill me!”
Porter warned off the local cops, shrieking at her, “You’re bleepin’ mine!”
Shea testified: “He grabbed my wrist, he violently pulled me out so hard that I fell to the ground.”
And then, she said, he touched her breasts and groped her “below the waist.”
On the witness stand in federal court years later, defendant Porter claimed that he could not recall using obscenities against his victim. However, under oath he specifically did recall NOT groping Shea – it’s odd how these cops’ memories work.
That’s what I wrote five months ago. Two months later, he was gone, with no fanfare. Like Brian Tully, nothing to see here….
The beating of Shea occurred in 2007, but her case wasn’t settled until 2015. A jury in federal court awarded her $300,000, and the judge gave her another $366,000 in legal fees – that’s how egregious the MSP’s foot-dragging and stone-walling were.
The jury found Porter guilty of “malicious prosecution,” as well as violating her constitutional rights to enjoy “Freedom from Excessive Force.”
Of course, in the finest tradition of the State Police, Porter was rewarded and promoted for his atrocious behavior.
He was promoted, in order, first to Trooper First Class, then Sergeant, then Lieutenant, and finally Detective Lieutenant.
At least he didn’t kill anybody. Trooper Scott Quigley did, while recording a BAC of .114, after which Quigley got promoted to sergeant.
In that November column, I asked if the POST Commission knew about this horrific incident in Milton, because Porter at the time remained certified as a peace officer in good standing.
How did a total pass for Porter’s appalling actions help the POST Commission in its mission “to improve policing and enhance public confidence in law enforcement?”
This week, I checked out Porter’s current status on the POST Commission website. Now he’s listed as an “unassociated officer,” and his ratring has gone from certified to “restricted,” whatever that means.
By comparison, the Farwell twins from Stoughton are “decertified,” and Brian Albert of 34 Fairview Road fame, is “expired.”
When Porter beat up Beth Shea, she had a $400,000-a-year job in securities. Afterwards, she could no longer had the pressure. She became a $13-an-hour veterinarian’s assistant.
And her tormentor now gets to grab $11,459 a month for the rest of his life, even if he didn’t get a farewell send off at Florian Hall.
Next: Judge Doolin, do the right thing and okay the public release of those 44,000 pages of Michael Proctor texts. Those will make Porter look like Dudley Do-Right.